Current Events > How much should I stretch the truth in a job application?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I'm applying to a data engineering internship. There's two questions that seem very relevant to the job:

• Do you have practical experience with SQL?
• Do you have practical experience with ETL / building a data pipeline?

"Practical experience" is defined as a school project, personal project, research, or prior work/internship.

The SQL is a huge yes. I got third place in a university-wide case competition in designing a database that used SQL to match a client's internal machine part codes to their shipping codes. And I had a whole class called "data management" that more academically taught the use of SQL. (The project was a seat-of-my-pants thing.)

The ETL/pipeline, the most honest response is no. ETL is a specific data pipeline type, and in general data pipelines should be able to take data from one place and put it another place. I just haven't really worked on that. But if I stretch the definition I could say yes. The SQL project scanned 'external' data (the shipping code from a shipment) and compared it to an internal list, and like techincally that is a data pipeline in a very loose sense.

I'm just pretty sure that they automatically ignore applications that answer no to one of these questions so...

---

But if I stretch the definition

Yes do this til it's nearly unreasonable, they don't care. The robot you're currently working with certainly doesn't care

I got hired over others who had certs in a job I had zero reason getting because I gave an emphatic yes to everything like this

---